January 27, 2012

The Chicago Park District buried the real news when it unveiled some promising but imperfect sketches last week for the nearly 20-acre chunk of Grant Park known as Daley Bicentennial Plaza (below).

The plans ditch an idea that the district and former Mayor Richard M. Daley once supported--ramming a mostly-underground children’s museum into Grant Park’s northeast corner (left). It’s gone, finito, Rahmbo-ized. Now, after months of dissembling, the Chicago Children’s Museum is for the first time admitting the obvious about the controversial kiddie bunker it sought to build just south of Randolph Street.

Instead, he said, the museum is focused on its discussions with Navy Pier officials about revamping and expanding its present home at the pier. “With recent changes in the economic and political climate,” Mertz said, “it made us take a step back and take a look at our position.”

Translation: The recession hammered fund-raising efforts for the proposed, $100 million museum and Mayor Rahm Emanuel dealt those plans a decisive blow when he signaled that it was time to hit the “reset button” on the divisive issue.

The museum’s defeat is a major victory for opponents who based their case on the historic court rulings that have kept Grant Park “forever open, clear and free“ of buildings and other obstructions. These strictures on structures are a prized legacy of the mail-order magnate A. Montgomery Ward, who more than a century ago battled to keep Grant Park free from clutter like stables, squatters’ shacks and railroad sheds.

Yet the museum’s defeat is also a victory for Chicago’s children. They won’t be consigned to the equivalent of the basement, a fate they would have suffered because the museum kept pushing its indoor spaces underground as it tried to comply with the Ward rulings. Instead, the kids will have more room to romp outdoors, amid fresh air and sunlight—a welcome shift in this time of epidemic childhood obesity.

Adults should be pretty pleased, too, by the prospect of gliding past towering evergreen trees on a meandering skating rink or rappelling up boldly sculpted climbing structures.

The plans, designed by New York landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh and referred to as “North Grant Park” by park district officials, mix such contemporary flourishes with the romantic, curvilinear geometry of Frederick Law Olmsted, the great 19th Century landscape architect who co-designed New York’s Central Park and did much to shape Chicago’s Jackson and Washington Parks.

We’d better pay attention because the plans, which will cost at least $35 million to implement, do not appear to be an architect’s flight of fancy.

Park district officials say they have the $35 million, a result of the deal to lease city-owned garages, including the East Monroe Street Garage beneath Daley Bicentennial Plaza, to Laz Parking and Morgan Stanley. In addition, the East Monroe garage’s roof is leaky and its rubberized, waterproofing membrane needs to be replaced. To do that, the entire surface of Daley Bicentennial Plaza—Daley Bi, for short--will be torn up starting next fall. The new park is supposed to emerge in 2015.

The redesigned park will easily improve on Daley Bi, a quiet but utterly undistinguished open space of rigid, rectilinear geometry that is pocked with ugly air vents and offers a poor pedestrian link between Millennium Park and the lakefront.

The new park’s curvilinear geometry, a sharp departure from Grant Park’s formal outdoor rooms, will nicely take its cues from Frank Gehry’s serpentine BP Bridge and spin them into a series of inviting sub-areas. They will include tree-shaded “lawn valleys” that will take advantage of the park’s sloping contours, providing visitors welcoming spots for sitting and gazing.

These restful spaces would contrast with high-voltage zones like a nearly three-acre children’s play area in the park’s southeast corner and, in the north end, the skating loop that would be set amid evergreen trees and ring the mountain-like climbing structures.

The proposed mix of active and passive spaces, hills and flatlands, relaxed geometry and convenient pathways leading to and from nearby attractions, promises to enhance both the form and function of Grant Park. The park would be quieter and more pastoral than spectacle-filled Millennium Park, yet it would still pack enough punch to be a destination in and of itself.

But there are plenty of risks, beginning with the budget, which almost surely won’t cover the full cost of the proposals and will require corporate sponsorships. If adequate funds aren’t raised, the door will be open to shoddy construction that would fail to match Grant Park’s Beaux-Arts elegance. This pitfall is especially relevant for the proposed climbing structures, which, if poorly done, would look like something out of a suburban health club.

The proposed height and placement of the structures—the tallest of them would rise 60 feet, according to sketches—offers further reason for worry. It appears that the highest of them would block views of Buckingham Fountain from Randolph Street. Urbanski acknowledged the concern, saying that the design of the structures is not set and that they could be “bent” to frame the vista of the fountain instead of blocking it.

How ironic it would be, with the Children’s Museum plan consigned to history, if Chicago allowed new obstructions into its treasured front yard. As Ward and today’s park crusaders know all too well, the fight to preserve Grant Park’s sacred open spaces from well-meaning intruders is never done.

(North Grant Park images from the Web site of the Chicago Park District; Tribune photo of Daley Bicentennial Plaza by Alex Garcia)

Posted at 06:03:43 PM

Comments

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One more step is needed to open up Grant Park:

De-pave Lake Shore Drive.

Remove the eight-lanes of cement and asphalt. Allow cars, which are easily driven and moved, to find other routes.

Plant grass and make paths for the people along the lakefront to walk, to picnic, to visit, to meander, or to rest along the lake.

If the Chicago Park District can build, and plan on supporting, climbing walls and an ice skating rink, features that will require maintenance and support staffing, why can't Cook County rebuild and support the Swallow Cliff toboggan runs?

But I wonder if they considered building a green overpass over Lake Shore Drive by the Cancer Survivors' Memorial? That whole section of Grant Park is essentially one big roof over a parking garage, so why not extend the green roof over LSD to the lakeshore? It would look sort of like a green lava flow oozing down (into?) the lake.

An added benefit is it would take away the distracting views for drivers as they approach the curve on LSD (and provide a safe haven during winter snow dumps?).

Basically an overpass with grass, paths and easy link-up to the bike path.

Too bad the topography doesn't really make such a structure work down by Queen's Landing, but a green swath linking Grant Park to the Lakefront would be a great addition to Chicago's front door park.

@MaryContrary:
Take Buckingham Fountain apart & reassemble it & all of Grant Park east of Columbus at an elevation that's 20 feet higher & you can bury all of LSD under an overhang from Randolph to the Field Museum.

Garry...your idea would result in a view-busting berm for all of Grant Park. Currently you can see the lake from most areas of the park, a twenty foot berm would put an end to that (and lake breezes on the playing fields?).

Your "Relief, worry on park plan" of January 29, 2012 is historically off the mark. 27 years ago painter Chapman Kelley installed a 66,000 sq. ft. noncommissioned public artwork the "Chicago Wildflower Works I, 1984 - 2004" in Grant Park in the exact spot of the proposed site of the failed Children's Museum. He did it for the duration with official park district approval. Kelley's 20 yr-old artwork cost taxpayers not one red penny, he totally self-funded it. It was maintained by dedicated volunteers under his direct supervision and because it consisted of native Illinois plants carefully selected by Kelley it thrived solely on rainwater; no tap water was used. It was well-received by the public and was an environmental success story ahead of its time utilizing no insecticides or fertilizer. The Chicago Park District altered Kelley’s artwork in 2004. Kelley immediately filed a lawsuit to protect his artists rights. He took the dispute all the way to a Chicago federal appeals court. On February 15, 2011 the Court handed down an adverse decision to Kelley.

Note:
The history of the "Chicago Wildflower Works I, 1984 - 2004" is documented by the Chicago Tribune in the following six articles: